The "gruntiest" amplifier I've come across recently was Bryston's 28BSST -- boring class AB, you can download the schematic from the manufacturer. There's "magic" in some of the implementation, which are key to making it happen, but it demonstrates that just doing things conventionally in an overall sense is sufficient ...

I've listened to 40 years of Bryston amplifier evolution. Compared to Pass, Ayre, Parasound, Audio Research and other well regarded competition i find them grainy, lacking resolution, and even harsh souding on a variety of speakers. Bryston's seemingly overly positive reviews may have more to do with the size of their advertising budget than their technical and audible accomplishments.

Bryston's famed "discrete " preamp topology is a 3 stage simple discrete opamp coupled through 4 to 6 aluminim caps per channel, an entire preamp is powered by a single pair of fixed voltage three terminal regulators from an unsophisticated raw supply.

I've listened to 40 years of Bryston amplifier evolution. Compared to Pass, Ayre, Parasound, Audio Research and other well regarded competition i find them grainy, lacking resolution, and even harsh souding on a variety of speakers. Bryston's seemingly overly positive reviews may have more to do with the size of their advertising budget than their technical and audible accomplishments.

Perhaps you can teach an old dog new ..... have you actually listened to these units? Bryston of late seems to have learnt a few tricks, there's been a marked turnaround of opinion recently -- check out the 6moons review.

Those adjectives you use can be ascribed to virtually any amplifier not fully optimised in a setup; I listened in agony to Audio Research M600 Reference amps on one very ambitious setup, they were drilling holes through my skull ...

I heard a decent drum solo workout on the Brystons, the genuine bite and raw impact of the real thing on a casual playback was impressive...

I am not sure it is correlated with bandwidth (outrageous anyway)or current. No miller cap and OL bandwidth >20 000. All precautions had been taken that any stage never run out of current up to 6Mhz.... All that, with measuring distortions so low that i don't know what i could notice ;-)

Tough customers. In all my years here Bryston is the only audio amp maker that inquired about licensing one of our patents. We do/did some custom branding for others to hide part numbers. None now, but at least one CD maker (re-boxer) added some quite expensive op-amps more than 20yr. ago.

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"The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important."

35 years ago I thought that class A is the history. May be it is the time now?

Andrew Lakner had just finished to provide his very very nice SSA for a recording studio. (Current feedback symmetrical)
Then, for some reasons, build a Hypex NC400 and was in the same studio to compare them.
This guy is a very good designer, use to listen carefully at each steps of his work and had proven he owns clever ears.
That's what he said, despite one of them was his baby:
"...can say firmly the amps are similar in character and musical presentation in general. From there on, subtle differences are noticeable, some in a favor to NC400, some to SSA, have to be fair and honest."